Experiences from a Kannadiga's kitchen, twists on traditional eats, delectable accidents and more

Ragi Burfi

It is Deepawali time, time to share, feast and enjoy the victory of good over and evil and to acknowledge the large heart Bali Chakravarthy who will be visiting us his beloved citizens on Balipadyami. To the feasting part. I have finished preparing my Deepawali spread. This time doing something ambitious. Prepared all the goodies at home! So now they are all nicely packed and ready to go. But had planned to do this post a few days back but could not. Here we go.
My plan was to have sweets made of different grains. Kajjaya is made of rice, Wheat Laddo out of whole wheat flour, 7 cups out of chickpea flour. Decided to try something with Ragi. The Ragi halbai is very tasty but rather time consuming so was figuring out what to do. All of a sudden came an idea to combine the goodness of Ragi Halbai and Burfi, and I should confess I did not go wrong. This was the most appreciated sweet of all. Also I adds a beautiful rustic touch to the Deepawali gift platter.

Grease a cookie sheet or a jelly roll tin with a little ghee and set it aside.

Sieve the ragi flour using a fine mesh strainer. Discard any rough bits and coarse grains. We need only the fine part of the flour. Use two measures of this fine flour.

Heat a non stick pan, place two tbsp of ghee in the pan and throw in the Ragi flour. Toast the Ragi flour till fragrant. It takes a while to get there. It took me almost 20 minutes on low heat. Remove from heat and set it aside.

Grate the khoa using the finer side of the grater. It will be easier to use either chilled or frozen Khoa.

Combine the Khoa, toasted Ragi flour and sugar. Make a hole in the middle and pour small quantity of whole milk mixing it into the flour mixture. Make sure that there are no lumps. Stir in all of the milk to get a slurry.

Place the mixture on medium heat. Pour in the ghee and cook the mixture till it leaves the side of the pan and the mixture starts to solidify on the edges. Stir in the powdered cardamon and saffron.

Pour the mixture onto the prepared sheet. Spread it into about 1/4" thickness. Score the sheet into Burfi of desired size, mine area about 1" *2 "

Place bits of cashews on each of the Burfi. Cut them as scored once they are slightly cool but set.

P.S: Use any container of choice to measure the ingredients. Just make sure to use the same container to measure out all the ingredients. Also vegetarian silver vark can be used to decorate the Burfi.